The American Prospect - Think Biden’s Unpopular? Check Out His Fellow Leaders.

If floundering leaders and ineffectual democracies are the new norm, we’re in a very dangerous time.

by Harold Meyerson
December 23, 2024



Even though many economic metrics show Joe Biden’s term as president to have been a success (and a historic success by the metric of enhancing workers’ rights), by political metrics it has to be judged to be a flop. It’s becoming clearer that much of the reasons for that flop resulted from Biden’s age-related infirmities, which made him a very uncertain trumpet for his own policies.

But when Biden is put up against his peers, it also becomes clear that something more menacing than the travails of age is stalking the leaders of the foremost Western powers. The polling firm Morning Consult surveyed citizens of the world’s major democracies in late November and early December, and the results, even allowing for exceptional margins of error, show that Biden is anything but alone.

Morning Consult had Biden with a 37 percent approval rating, against a 55 percent disapproval rating. That dismal approval number, however, was roughly twice the size of the leaders of France and Germany, and higher than those of all the leaders of the G7 nations save Italy, with whom he was effectively tied. Here, in descending order of approval, are the numbers:

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni: 38 percent approval to 55 percent disapproval

America’s Biden: 37 to 55

The U.K.’s Keir Starmer: 30 to 59

Canada’s Justin Trudeau: 26 to 68

Japan’s Shigeru Ishiba: 24 to 53

Germany’s Olaf Scholz: 19 to 75

France’s Emmanuel Macron: 18 to 75

Most leaders of major democracies that aren’t members of the G7 also came in with a negative balance. Spain’s Pedro Sanchez put up a 32 percent approval rating to 63 percent disapproval; Brazil’s Lula (before his emergency surgery) was at 42/53, and Poland’s Donald Tusk almost broke even, 44/45. It’s important to note the vast ideological spectrum of these leaders, ranging from the democratic socialism of Sanchez and Lula to the right populism of Meloni.

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